<jats:p> In this paper, we study real-time classical matrix mechanics of a simplified [Formula: see text] matrix model inspired by the black hole evaporation problem. This is a step towards making a quantitative model of real-time evaporation of a black hole, which is realized as a bound state of D0-branes in string theory. The model we study is the reduction of Yang–Mills in [Formula: see text] dimension to [Formula: see text] dimensions, which has been corrected with an additional potential that can be interpreted as a zero-point energy for fermions. Our goal is to understand the lifetime of such a classical bound state object in the classical regime. To do so, we pay particular attention to when [Formula: see text]-particles separate to check that the “off-diagonal modes” of the matrices become adiabatic and use that information to improve on existing models of evaporation. It turns out that the naive expectation value of the lifetime with the fermionic correction is infinite. This is a logarithmic divergence that arises from very large excursions in the separation between the branes near the threshold for classical evaporation. The adiabatic behavior lets us get some analytic control of the dynamics in this regime to get this estimate. This divergence is cutoff in the quantum theory due to quantization of the adiabatic parameter, resulting in a long lifetime of the bound state, with a parametric dependence of order [Formula: see text]. </jats:p>